Stay in Trend with Material Design: Features & Themes

TemplateMonster is aimed at delivering only the most innovative solutions to its customers. For that reason, the company always keeps track of all latest trends and makes skilful use of them in its projects. With the growing popularity of material design, TM has introduced it into some of its themes, as expected. Would you like to see them and learn more about this trend? Then, read on the post.

So, what is material design? According to the Google definition, it is a visual language that combines innovative principles of technology with classic standards of design. Google introduced this technique in June, 2014, with the release of the latest Android Lollipop version, 5.0. It was developed in an attempt to build a single system capable of ensuring the same user experience across all the platforms and devices.

Although this trend was meant solely for the mobile environment at the initial stage, it found its way into the web subsequently. As a result, more and more designers started taking advantage of its traits. If you want to manipulate it too, you will need to have a clear understanding of material design features and concepts. Don’t hesitate to learn about them below.

• Material design is based in the tactile reality of rationalized space and consistent motion. Its flexibility gives rise to new affordances that supersede those of the physical world, but don’t break its laws.
• The existence and interaction of objects in space is conveyed through the basics of light, surface and motion.
• Material design is influenced by key elements of print design, namely fonts, colors, images, grids, scales and space. They set a hierarchical and meaningful structure focused on the immersion of the user in the experience.
• It is the user who plays the role of a motion-setter and transforms the environment with his actions. When objects are moved and transformed, their transitions remain coherent, which keeps the continuity of the experience.
• Material design takes place in the 3D space, where objects have three dimensions, particularly width, height and thickness. While the former two can vary, the latter remains invariable.
• In the material environment, objects cast shades that indicate the direction of motion and the distance between surfaces, i.e. elevation. When the level of objects’ elevation grows, shadows become larger and softer, whereas its decrease makes shadows smaller and crisper.
• Content can take any shape and color, but it doesn’t add any thickness to the material scene. Although content behavior is independent of the material design, it is still limited within its borders.
• Material design can undergo a number of transformations. It can grow and shrink along its plane as well as consolidate after being split.
• Objects in the material environment maintain parent-child relations that determine their interaction. Each object can be subordinate to only one parent and can have any number of children. Objects take over all the properties of their parent, e.g. position, scale, rotation and elevation.

As we have mentioned above, TemplateMonster has already released a number of templates designed with material design features in mind. If you need some inspiration of implementing this technique on your site, look through the following 10 material design themes. For more inspiration, you can also check some Dribbble shots and icons available for free.

Material Design Portfolio WordPress Theme

The first material design theme from our set is meant for personal and corporate web portfolios built with WordPress. It features a sticky burger menu with a dropdown category panel and fly-out subcategories. This navigation element keeps the layout free from clutter and gives a constant access to all the info. Spiced with a parallax effect, this responsive theme can immerse web users in a more dynamic action while page scrolling.

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Education Help WordPress Theme

Consider this material WP theme to update the interface of your educational portal. Resembling the metro style, its bright design is enlivened with HTML & JavaScript, parallax and lazy load effects. To enrich your site with different content types, this well-layered theme is packed with 4 gallery scripts, audio & video options, and a rich set of Google fonts.

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Toys Store Magento Theme

Build a full-featured eCommerce site using this Magento theme with material design elements. It comes with a number of options facilitating shoppers’ experience, particularly Olark live chat, grid & list view modes, Ajax cart, multilingual support, and currency switcher. To increase the number of your subscribers, there is a newsletter signup form that pops up when someone enters your site.

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Books Store Magento Theme

Here is another eCommerce theme powered by Magento and enhanced with touches of material design. Its wise product categorization keeps the inventory well-organized and, therefore, convenient to explore. The theme is supplied with effective communication tools such an online chat and contact form. It also supports English, German, Spanish and Russian languages as well as USD, EUR and GBP currencies.

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Dating Responsive Landing Page Template

This mobile-friendly template flavored with material design is developed specifically for dating sites. It features parallax backgrounds in the header and section with testimonials, while the other sections are made crystal clear to bring the content to focus. Based on the 1170-px grid, the template complies with the modern standards of web development, particularly CCS3, HTML5, jQuery, LESS, valid and semantic coding.

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Family Center Responsive Landing Page Template

Create a stylish landing page for your site by means of this responsive template embodying material design. As its package contains sliced PSD, you can easily edit graphic files in Photoshop the way you like. To facilitate your interaction with customers, the template is prebuilt with booking, contact and newsletter subscription forms.

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Travel Agency Responsive WordPress Theme

Promote travel services with the help of this responsive WordPress theme integrated with Bootstrap functions. It provides everything necessary for a successful online image, e.g. social icons, sharing buttons, audio player, video option, custom post types and page templates. As for the visual side, theme combines material design with parallax and lazy load effect adding more vigor to the page’s feel.

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Tools Store VirtueMart Template

This VirtueMart template with material design is a versatile solution for any online store whose owner wants a minimal look for it. The template’s functionality is supplied with product carousels, Ajax shopping cart, calendar, commenting system, live search, breadcrumbs, and much more. On the contact page, there is a Google map with a zooming effect meant to show the location of your store from a closer perspective.

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Web Design Storage WordPress Theme

If you want to refresh the online presence of your creative agency, this material design theme with parallax backgrounds is the right choice for you. Powered by Cherry Framework, it comes with multiple fine-tuning options and shortcodes for easier content management. This WPML-ready theme can let you translate your website interface so that it could be used by the international audience.

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Hotels Responsive Landing Page Template

The last material design template listed in our set is recommended for hotel, real estate and any other accommodation-related site. It features a reservation form to facilitate the process of booking a room at your establishment. What’s more, the template is optimized for mobile screens and compatible with all the browsers used widely among Internet users today.

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To conclude, material design features can make the screen image more realistic, which makes this trend a great option for your website. And the themes listed above can help you implement it effortlessly. So, give one of them a try, and share your impression about it in the comments.